unforum

Tien_Le

Groan

**Posted:** Tue Aug 08, 2006 2:03 pm

_________________
consume less; live more

mapmaker

I don't think the spelling's half bad (although the instances of "definitely" irk me).

A few things: the poem ("Revelation") is not quite correct - there are errors in the third and fourth lines of the first stanza. I doubt there is a puzzle there, but just in case, I thought it worth mentioning.

Also, what is up with imagination.html? If it's a maze, there's no clear end point (maybe the red "door" in the upper-left quadrant? Maybe one of the exits in the middle? Maybe the ghost pen?), and the "path of least resistance" doesn't mean much to me. Does that mean follow the pellets? You can only go so far in an unbroken chain.

If we had something the same size and shape, I'd recommend overlaying the Pac-Man image over it and seeing where things line up. There's also counting somehow based on the number of pellets in a row/column/line.

Map

EDIT: Wow! There's a spell-checker? The first sentence's word in quotes should read defin-A-tely.

**Posted:** Tue Aug 08, 2006 3:25 pm

cvk_0 · Boot Joined: 07 Nov 2004 Posts: 25 Location: Canada, eh!

Ideas regarding the imagination page:

the normal start position for pacman is the center right by the arrow. There is also a strip of red pixels the same color as the arrow in the top left quadrant, I'm assuming that's the end of the path.

As for the path of least resistance. I've not really looked for paths by that name but there are others like the cherry path http://www.mameworld.net/pacman/patterns.html

Now lets say that the path of least resistance is a path that has all the holes in it (spots without pellets). I made a quick little trip that covered all the holes without any overlap, starting at the arrow and ending at the line. Then ended up with a binary string of 1's 'n 0's (1=pellet, 0=hole). Unfortunately this didn't convert to any recognisable text. and I did not end up with enough bits to make an integer number of bytes anyway.
So maybe (probably!) there is some other path that will get something.

Or perhaps it is not binary, but Morse or something.

anyway, I hope this acts as a springboard for someone elses idea.

**Posted:** Tue Aug 08, 2006 4:44 pm

_________________
** this space intentionally left empty **

Hangman42

[Landalan] In game reply

**Posted:** Wed Aug 09, 2006 12:55 am

mongo · Veteran Joined: 26 Jul 2006 Posts: 86

doing a contrast fill on the pacman image shows a couple of the dots joined. Can't make anything of it though.

BTW have converted the image to jpeg and xsteg comes back negative

**Posted:** Wed Aug 09, 2006 6:06 am

grumpyboy · Unfettered Joined: 04 Feb 2003 Posts: 660

update at the inside gamer

**Posted:** Wed Aug 09, 2006 7:57 am

duncan · Boot Joined: 17 Jul 2006 Posts: 43

I just made my usual site download and the pacman gif has changed from yesterday , nothing visual but yesterday's pacman was 9.35kb while today it's 9.31 kb .

Btw I don't think converting gif to jpg helps the desteg as jpeg is a compressed format and anything steged may get corrupted in the conversion .

Also , I'm almost certain the landalan and tig guys are different , from landalan we have :

**Posted:** Wed Aug 09, 2006 9:34 am

mongo · Veteran Joined: 26 Jul 2006 Posts: 86

The pacman picture is different. The dots are no longer joined

**Posted:** Wed Aug 09, 2006 10:08 am

Fayul · Boot Joined: 18 May 2006 Posts: 11

Searching around for "pacman" and "the path of least resistence" turns up many references to a blog at www.themanwhoinventedtheinternet.com, a blog which seems to be having something to do with Web 2.0: Haven't there already been web2.0 references? Unfortunately, the site doesn't seem to exist anmore: it links to the random filler adspace thing you get around the internet so much.

**Posted:** Wed Aug 09, 2006 6:53 pm

grumpyboy · Unfettered Joined: 04 Feb 2003 Posts: 660

another update at insidegamer.com

**Posted:** Wed Aug 09, 2006 9:32 pm

grumpyboy · Unfettered Joined: 04 Feb 2003 Posts: 660

got a reply from John Q of theinsidegamer.com:

**Posted:** Thu Aug 10, 2006 6:00 am

duncan · Boot Joined: 17 Jul 2006 Posts: 43

From the comments he asks for contact from an industry insider

**Posted:** Thu Aug 10, 2006 6:38 am

duncan · Boot Joined: 17 Jul 2006 Posts: 43

Doh I just thought about it : JohnQ wanted a contact in landalan AND he is an insider ... I just sent him an email , we'll see what it gets .

**Posted:** Thu Aug 10, 2006 7:24 am

grumpyboy · Unfettered Joined: 04 Feb 2003 Posts: 660

i had the same conclusion after my post above so I sent jonSPLATlandalan.org's contact to John Q. here's what i got back:

**Posted:** Thu Aug 10, 2006 8:45 am

freshness · Boot Joined: 29 Dec 2005 Posts: 52

Hey all,

I'm not especially good at puzzles, so I haven't posted much, but I've gotten halfway started on an idea.

Drawing in a path of least resistance from the arrow to the red line, and counting dots as 1, and blanks as 0 gives a long binary string. Now, the picture changed and has the word "Bacon" hidden on the left. So, trying the Bacon bilateral cipher, once the string has been split into fives and inverted, it translates to: